|
|||||||||
|
itsablog
the internet gets stupid last modified: Monday, December 11, 2006 (10:48:48 AM) It was merely ignorant before, but it's about to get stupid:
http://news.com.com/Senator+Illegal+images+must+be+reported/2100-1028_3-6142332.html? Senator -- and possibly your next president -- John McCain (R-AZ) is proposing a new law that would require web site operators to report users who violate local/federal child pornography statutes (and possibly other laws restricting expression video image/video). Records must be kept. Profiles must be deleted. Fines go up to 300 grand. I cannot stress how incredibly bad this is for the internet at large. The internet simply does not operate in the way which Senator McCain believes it does. McCain seems to believe that everyone uses their real name on the internet. I'm not sure if this is how things work in Arizona, but I am most certain that in other states where senators do their research, it does not. Sites like this one make a fair effort to do what they can because regardless of whether short-sighted legislators like McCain believe it or not, we're actually against child pornography. However, if this new law passes, it would open websites up to the obvious attack of simply creating an unlimited number of fake profiles and dropping porn everywhere on a target website. Does this sound familiar? Yes, it already exists. It's called spam. Plain, old, run-of-the-mill spam. What this bill would do is hold a knife to the throat of any website who does not go on every single wild goose chase to isolate, identify, and eliminate every single piece of spam posted in their web forums and on their websites. This is hard enough without specifically becoming a target for this type of nonsense. Should a website become a target of a Motivated Third Party Determined to Get Someone Prosecuted, this attack becomes trivial. In effect, the internet would be controlled by Russian and Chinese spammers and we either a) restrict all user feedback and user-generated content (which is what political allies the MPAA and the RIAA would *love*), b) restrict the internet to only people we "know", having a series of incorrigible closed networks that harken back to the 1980s, or c) hand over control of the internet to China, South Korea, and the EU since we seem to have trouble grasping basic realities of life and technology. If this bill were to pass, it could be potentially very bad. No more Rubberslug. No more MySpace. No more anything. Only MTV and CNN, just the way your corporate overlords like it.
I wonder how much John McCain actually surfs the internet. He obviously doesn''t know much about spam, user IDs, or well, anything about how websites work. I swear, no one researches anything anymore before they open their fat mouths.
Why, yes, yes in AZ we do use our real names on the internet. My real name is klet. Spelled just like that on my birth certificate. Family name? Who needs those? Yep, don''t mind us freaks in AZ. :P You know how people usually think everything''s wrong with Congress, except their own congressman? Well, my congressman''s an idiot.
I don''t have a beef with Texas senators, but Tom DeLay''s district is (was?) actually just outside of where my parents live in Houston. Highway construction. Everywhere. Sugarland is a sinkhole for every single kind of pork barrel project imaginable. And poor Alief -- where my parents live -- is a collection of out-of-business supermarkets and places the suburbanites went to buy their drugs. It''s not the worst place in Houston, but building a tollway through my district to keep the rich folk from having to stop anywhere near it is insulting. In any case, stupidity is everywhere. It tends to follow money. Make no mistake, legislation like this isn''t about protected children, it''s about protecting established media industries.
It sure sounds akin to the mindset in Congress that decided that personal emails and private messaging are to be considered public domain because they couldn''t grasp the correlation between email and postal letters. At first (and to be honest), I was relieved to see some beating down on the maverick state of the (particularly) early years of internet conduct. For example, it was not too long ago that the courts and the public snickered at the even the mention of the idea of prosecute-worthy slander or liberal violations on the newly paved information highway. I mean, they had said, it isn''t like anyone actually reads that stuff on that silly net, right? Now that they feel as if they are finally more acquainted with this form of mass communication, they are swinging the legal pedatum the other way. I must concur with the original post. This proposed Act is just another example of the branches of gov. attempting to regulate an era it is not yet familiar with. |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
